The entertainment industry has become a ubiquitous part of modern society. Movie and television studios commonly spend millions of dollars to produce movies and television shows that the public spends billions of dollars each year to consume. People rely on movie and television media to provide entertainment, but also as a source of current events, popular culture, and even education.
Over time, technology enabling production of movies and television shows has improved dramatically, allowing the entertainment industry to sustain the public's demand for new media. Today, entertainment media can be delivered to consumers through a wide variety of mediums including cable and satellite receivers, personal computers, or mobile devices in electronic communication with wireless data networks. In addition, video and audio can be recorded and delivered to consumers in extremely high definition and with extremely high clarity.
In order to ensure the highest possible quality final product, audio is recorded with an eye toward producing an audio recording that faithfully represents the recorded sounds. One problem that can reduce audio fidelity is clipping. Clipping is a form of distortion that limits a signal once the signal reaches a threshold, such as the maximum power output of an amplifier. In the case of audio-signal processing, clipping occurs when an amplifier becomes saturated due to a combination of high gain and loud sound. The peaks of the audio waveform are clipped because the amplifier lacks the capacity to accurately amplify the loud sound and the recording becomes less accurate.
In most cases, the device that operates to record high quality video is not the same device that is used to record high quality audio. In other words, for sophisticated movie and television productions, the audio is commonly recorded as a separate data signal from the video. After all, even if an audio recording device were physically attached to or integrated within a camera, on a typical movie or television set the camera operator often cannot position the camera in the ideal location to record dialogue or surrounding sounds while simultaneously filming the environment from the appropriate angle or distance. Furthermore, audio and video are typically recorded from many different perspectives and sources. For example, microphones are often physically attached to each of the actors and also positioned nearby, while cameras are positioned at various distances and angles to capture close-ups of the actors as well as the surrounding environment. Every amplified signal runs a risk of clipping, whether the signal originates with a camera, microphone, musical instrument, or other input device.
Because of the complexity of recording high quality audio and video, in many cases, movie and television productions employ entirely separate crews to record audio and video. The audio and video crews are then supervised and coordinated by various members of the production crew such as directors, script supervisors, or producers. Audio and video are then edited and combined by editors during the post-production process. The process can involve multiple amplification steps. Audio or video artifacts caused along the way because of clipping in various amplification stages are difficult or impossible to repair during post-production. The quality of the end product is increased by maintaining audio signals without introducing losses such as losses resulting from clipping during amplification.
Furthermore, the highest quality signal is usually the original analog signal. To ensure the highest quality product, the sound production crew wants to maintain an analog signal for as long as possible and prevent clipping in the signal. One way to limit clipping is to manually adjust the gain as the signal changes. However, manually adjusting gain is slow and a significant portion of the signal will clip before a human can detect clipping and reduce the gain. Furthermore, maintaining a high fidelity analog signal is difficult, as many signal-processing steps are carried out on digital signals requiring that the analog signal be converted to a corresponding digital signal.